1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to a math leaning, training, and playing system, comprising two sets of 20 paired playing pieces.
2. Description of Prior Art
There are various ways for parents and math educators to teach math beginners to tackle problems of addition and subtraction, specially when regrouping is necessary. More often, concrete objects are used to reinforce the math facts at this stage. Traditional ways of counting objects and fingers and the use of flash cards play an important role to get the math facts through.
Math beginners are incapable of any concepts without seeing or toughing concrete objects. Numerous products of numbers and math facts have been introduced into the educational market, but few of them are concerned about children's psychological reality and academic ability of conceptual acceptance at this stage. Psychological and conceptual factors have a lot to do with the development of children's habitual methods in their future academic pursuit.
Regrouping and pair concepts in addition and subtraction have proved to be critical in developing children's metal arithmetic and interest in math. Most educators and parents have to get children into this stage by doing more drills and memorizing individual math facts. Pair concepts(10=5+5=4+6=3+7 . . . ; 10-5=5 . . .)have yet to be fully employed in the process of learning and training. Math games have been created with attempts to raise learning interest. Such educational device include those disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 1,115,441 to Lake., U.S. Pat. No. 705,579 to Gilson, U.S. Pat. No. 1,699,629 to Phifer, U.S. Pat. No. 4,281,835 to Seiden, U.S. Pat. No. 894,043 to Oldroyd, U.S. Pat. No. 1,279,504 to Blau, U.S. Pat. No. 1,696,988 to Troidl, U.S. Pat. No. 1,323,986 to Joyce, and U.S. Pat. No. 1,696,987 to Troidl. All the above educational games provide an entertaining environment to raise math learning interest, but fail qualitatively and quantitatively to provide devices that promise stronger understanding and higher productivity after playing. In other words, players with same levels of math knowledge and skills can play together with fun and there is no guarantee that these games can help them move to higher levels. The physical structure and design of these games make it impossible to become educational devices to reinforce acquired skills, and, at the same time, introduce new knowledge and skills. For example, It is physically impossible for Lake's game to teach a 2.sup.nd grader to subtract 168 from 300.
Therefore, there is a great need for recognizing the children's psychological reality, satisfying their conceptual potential, and paving way for the development of mental arithmetic. There has further been a great need for discovering the mental process in addition and subtraction at the early learning stage, and providing a visual and straight-forward system backed by the conceptual-driven materials and psychologically-guided method for the learning and teaching process.